You are born with this will to
sin, will to disobey God. All of us in here can see where
our will took us, right? All of us have a testimony, not
a bragamony, but a testimony of God in His sovereignty and
in regeneration. The Holy Spirit is sovereign
in regeneration, in borning you again. John 3 says, the wind
blows where it pleases. You hear the sound, but you don't
see it. But you know, you hear people say that the wind is blowing.
Well, how do you know? Well, the leaves are shaking.
I can feel the wind in my face. The Holy Spirit in regeneration
does something on your insides that's even a mystery to you.
You're born of the Spirit of God. You're born again. You're given a new spirit, even
the Spirit of the Lord. And he begins to woo you to Jesus
Christ. How many of you can say, I've
been born again? How do you know? Do you remember? Do you remember? So I was born October 24th, 1944. I don't remember a thing about
it. I know my mom and dad said Dr. Pease was there driving his
old 44 Plymouth. He came to the house. I do know
some facts about it. And I do know that I've been
alive now almost 75 years. But you know, somehow or another,
I can't remember the day I was born. You say, well, I know the
day I was saved. No, you know the day you were
converted. You may remember times when you
were sitting in church and I was preaching or someone was preaching,
when things began to... happened different in your mind,
you begin to think and feel different. You can remember, you know, stealing
one of the Bibles from under one of the seats because you
wanted to read the word of God over in the dorm. If you're a
child of God, it is by the will of God, not by your will. Don't
be glorifying your will. God put a will in you, a willingness,
and you come to him. And you say to him, Lord, you
don't have to. I know if you give me what I
deserve, you'll damn me. But if you want to, you can make
me whole. It's a marvelous, matchless,
sovereign work of God when he saves a sinner. Now, the truth
is this. You say, well, what about all
those invitations in the Bible? Yes, they're true. And if you can hear them, God
gave you ears to hear. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. He qualifies who he's calling. Are you laboring? Are you heavy
laden? Has the world beat you up? Are
you sick of being sick and tired? Are you at a point where the
burden is so heavy, your sins are real, and you hear the gospel
invitation, come unto me. Just think about how unreasonable
you are in your flesh, and me too. I'm not leaving me out. But the Lord would say this,
come let us reason together. To us unreasonable people, I
mean, we're so stupid we'll stick needles in our arms with drugs.
We're so crazy we'll spend every dime we have on drugs. We're not reasonable, not within
ourselves, not until the Spirit of God sovereignly does something
on the inside of us. Now we reason together. And isn't
it a marvelous thing? And wasn't it a marvelous thing?
When you saw for the very first time, and you saw it clearly,
He died for me. He shed his blood for me. It
was on Calvary for me. He suffered and he paid my debt. And it even gets better. All
of a sudden, after so many years of riotous living, you find out
I'm not under condemnation. There's no condemnation to those
that are in Christ Jesus. I'm not under judgment. I'm not
going to hell. I'm heaven bound.